


White is Nothing Clouded into Criminality

by lenainu



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, but thought kagari was weirdly well adjusted, experimenting with characters, for someone who had spent most of his life, i really don't know this character very well, in some unexplained isolated institution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 01:53:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6066195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lenainu/pseuds/lenainu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles on Shusei Kagari from Psycho-Pass. Introspective and focusing on his past, before he was twenty-one and Akane joined the team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Shusei Kagari thinks back to that moment - which he does more often than is healthy, but it’s not like he has much else to do - he imagines that he could freeze the world in that instant, and stop everything. He doesn’t want to change it, he’s not that ridiculously optimistic, he just wants to stop it. Stop time, so that nothing that followed afterwards ever happened. So everything that happened afterwards was only one of those vague dreams people had on summer afternoons, comparing their lives to others.  
Of course, it was completely useless. It didn’t improve his hue one bit.

He still dreams about it though. He has little else to dwell on. That day, his first day at school. He’s unsure which of the memories are true or not now; he only knows the bare facts; he could have fabricated the rest in some weird attempt to comfort himself. But still he imagines that his father and mother loved him, before. His mother had orange hair, like him, he thinks, that she kept cut short. His father had the ubiquitous black hair. It could have been the other way around through. It was his father’s face he saw last, twisted in disgust, shame, hatred. Maybe Shusei wanted to be linked to his mother because he couldn’t accept that his father could hate him like that.  
It doesn’t matter. Shusei is never going to see them again. He promises himself that on his tenth birthday - the day he names his birthday, because no one bothered to tell him, but he knew birthdays were important to normal people - that when he gets out, he wouldn’t look for them, however much he wanted to. They didn’t want him. They left him here.

He’s fourteen now, and he passed his secondary level test two years ago. There was a furore about even letting him take it, but eventually he got to. He passed with flying colours, of course. Studying had a certain appeal when there was literally nothing else to do, apart from wander around inside his own head, and he was sick of his mind after years of being alone with it.

He’s fourteen and the prospect of being an Enforcer one day is the only thing keeping him alive.

 

* * *

 

He gets his own apartment in the building. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, everything. It’s a blank white canvas, so once Shusei figures out how to use the weird icon thing, he decorates it. White is a bad colour. It’s the colour of nothing, clouded into criminality. Less poetically, everything in the institution was white. They thought it would calm the inmates down - the ones that had a chance, that was, not Shusei - which he had always thought was stupid. White was glaring and everything looked dirty next to it. Maybe that was the point, now he thought about it.

Once he’s decorated it, it feels better. He still doesn’t know what to do with all the space though. No point in studying any more, now he’s out of there. He doesn’t really know what normal people do in their spare time. But now he’s free, he’s definitely not going to spend it staring at blank walls.

He’s not assigned to a team yet. Well, he probably is but they haven’t bothered to tell him. He’s got a meagre amount of money, maybe enough for food. He doesn’t really know, apart from in the abstract, like those maths problems; _if one apple costs five yen, how much does seven apples cost?_ He ends up asking the icon what normal people do.

“People enjoy a variety of activities. Young men often enjoy spending time with their families and friends, playing video-games and virtual realities, playing physical sports and learning new things!” the icon chirrups. If Shusei felt like living up to his hue, he would throw something at it. “Also, it is important for your hue that you believe you are ‘normal’ as well,” the icon continues. “Isolating yourself, even only by identity, leads to a cloudier hue and you don’t want that.”

This time, Shusei does throw his shoe at it. The shoe goes straight through, of course, but the icon stops talking, thankfully. It was too bizarre, having it lecture him on improving his hue. If anything worked, he would have gotten out a lot earlier, wouldn’t he?

He might try a video game later, though, once he can afford one. The virtual reality thing sounds a bit too close to his old day-dreams for comfort. And sports… He vaguely remembers playing football at some point, back before. He’d be crap at it now. The institution only bothered with team sports for the ones who could be rehabilitated, and even then not often. Competition could provoke violence, after all.

“Is there a gym here?” he asks the icon.

“Yes, there is a gym on floor four,” the icon says, re-materializing. “If you would like to go to the gym, you need to get permission from your Inspector first.”

Shusei leans back on the couch. Well, that was out of the running then. He wanted to keep the illusion of freedom for as long as possible. He wasn’t going to go searching for his handler.

“Where can I go without permission?” he asks.

“Many places!” the icon chirrups. Again. He really needs to reduce this thing’s optimism. It’s giving him a head-ache.

“Like?”

“Your apartment, the cafe, the psychiatrist clinic, the common room,”

All the places are in the building. So he’s not allowed to go outside. Huh. Well, it was still more than he had allowed to go in the institution. Small mercies, right?  
He wanders out of the room, closing the door behind him. He might as well do a bit of exploring. Might bump into someone, even if it’s just another Enforcer. He kind of wants to see what normal people are like though. The people in charge at the institution didn’t count.

He ends up on the roof. It’s flat and concrete and he has to climb a rusty metal ladder to get up there, but it’s still worth it. He can see the city from here.

Most of it is just more buildings, but here and there, there’s a touch of green, parks and play-grounds where families are having lunch. People are shopping and rushing to work and rush home. The sky is a pale blue with wisps of cloud that slowly cover the sky-space in grey fog. He stays up there for a long time.

 


	2. The Stories They Told

Once upon a time, they told stories to each other.

Here is the story:

The book said – children are born innocent. Sin only comes to adults. Sin is a choice.

Neither of them had read the book. When Shusei rolls his eyes – he's seen the adults do it and he practised for hours (what else was there to do) – and says (his friend?) the other boy just had a stupid dream, the other boy gets angry and says he's telling the truth, he is! His mother read it to him, when he was little.

He's two years years older than Shusei, and got picked up when he was seven. He's older than Shusei, and Shusei feels older than him, and it's weird.

Shusei didn't believe him because he was busy believing in his own gods, and their rules. In that world, he had only done something (horrific, disgusting, monster) in a past life, and was being punished for it in this life. The scanner had picked up on that past life.

That was all it had been.

Of course, that belief crumbles to dust soon enough, with enough time, even though he didn't even tell anyone about it (if you tell the adults, they will take it from you: that is a rule).

It happens the next year, when he meets another boy who he can't even speak to this time, because the rules have tightened, but-

They are friends. And without ever hearing his voice, without ever knowing his name (his friend tries to tell him in charades once and they both end up on the ground, clutching back their laughter, because they cannot disturb the adults) Shusei knows he will do anything for him.

And he thinks- his friend isn't a monster.

Shusei knows he is a monster, was a monster, is a monster. But his friend can't be. So-

He can't believe any more. And he remembers the first boy (removed months ago, because he disturbed the adults too much) who said: children are born innocent.

Monsters aren't born innocent, but his friend isn't a monster. He's a child, because he's definitely not an adult. Shusei would hate him (hate is something monsters only have) if he was an adult. He hates all the adults he knows. Hates how they look at him and think _monster_ (he is, he is, but it still _hurts_ ), hates how he has to ask them for everything.

Hates how they don't have to say _yes_ to his requests.

_He is a demanding monster._ He is a monster that wants to survive.

One of the most popular topics in class is about how they – the children – are all irredeemable. It's easy enough for Shusei to ask _why,_ without his words forming those shapes (sly monster).

It is this: the Sybil System knows that one day you will commit a crime. Your neurons are too loose, your morals are too weak, you are too greedy.

They say, the Sybil System is named after that ancient civilisation, the one with prophets, future-tellers (telling the future is also a lie, they say, it's only a silly story, like magic). They say it with pride.

_We're only protecting you from yourself. We knew you don't want to commit crime, do you, but you wouldn't be able to help it. That's why you have to stay here, to keep the rest of the world safe._

His friend is not weak, his friend is not greedy. His friend is not a monster for tomorrow.

They cannot see the future, or they would have taken Shusei the day he was born. Then he wouldn't have all these questions. Then he wouldn't remember wind on his face, and dirt between his fingers, and shrieking with joy when his father threw him up in the air (he doesn't like this last memory, because his father, but there is still _something_ that he wants about it that he doesn't understand). He would have no questions. He would have no friend, because he would have no concept of the word (they don't teach relationships in school, apart from _obey the adults,_ because _really, everyone knows they're never going to be well-adjusted citizens, so why bother?_ ).

_Children are innocent. They cannot tell the future._

These thoughts worm under his skin, uncomfortable, itchy, until he has to say them. So he does, to his friend. In silence, his friend smiles and- The thoughts aren't uncomfortable any more. They are the sky, falling upwards.

They are something called hope.

And hope is as tenacious, as fixated on survival, as Shusei is. It refuses to die. It burns and burns and it does not hurt as much as the glares of the adults thinking _monster_ , because hope replies _perhaps you could learn how not to be a monster._

Shusei thinks hope is a beautiful creature, a kind one, a pale-furred deer in the woods. He trusts it. He trusts his friend. So when his friend says the words silently to him across the corridor, he think _we could do it._

_Escape._

Later, he wishes that he had been able to see the future. Wishes that he never trusted hope. But he did, and then-

His friend-

Died.

He tries to die as well, afterwards, though he never thinks it in so many words. He thinks: _monster, monster, monster._

They put him in isolation for a month after the incident, though he only finds out how long it was afterwards. In there, it could have been a day or a thousand years. Time was different there.

First, he thought: _I am a monster, I am alone, I am a monster._

Before, he thought: nothing.

They notice he isn't eating his food. He can't do anything: he can barely think above the constant burning refrain in his head: he can't even think of eating.

They come in, and Shusei almost thinks it's a dream. When he's more lucid, his fingers curl around the drip attached to his arm, circled by a weird metal cuff so Shusei can't pull it out (he wouldn't – he's not a creature of action any more) and he _hates_ himself-

Because he remembers the gloved hands on his arm and how he tried to curl his fingers around hers even though he hates all adults-

Because it has been long enough in isolation that they have to feed him and-

He is _alone,_ and for a _stupidly weak_ moment there he had thought he couldn't bear it.

(She had pushed his fingers away, of course, and left the room without a word. Not even _don't do that._ )

It disgusts him enough – this children impulse, only allowed for those who were children, not monsters -to awaken that old ally of his. Not hope, hope was a traitor, a weakness, something that got the only friend he had ever had killed.

It says: _I will survive, if only to see you burn. Even if in the end, I burn as well._

They were right. He was never anything more than a monster.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please please comment if you like. Or didn't like it, so I can improve. Either way. Also, sorry if this Kagari is out of character. I haven't watched PsychoPass in ages, and I still can't figure out how he would be easily sociable when he spent his entire formative years in an isolated institution. Ah well. I'll figure something out.


End file.
